Q11 - Rolanda: The house on Oak Avenue has a larger yard

[Gerald]

PT65, S4, Q11 (Flaw).

Rolanda’s response to Tom suggests that Tom commits which one of the following reasoning errors?

(A) He fails to take into account the possibility that there are advantages to having a small yard.
(B) He presumes, without providing justification, that property that belongs to the city is available for private use.
(C) He improperly applies a generalization to an instance that it was not intended to cover.
(D) He fails to apply a general rule to all relevant instances.
(E) He presumes, without providing justification, that whatever is true of a part of a thing is also true of the whole.

(D) is correct.

To spot Tom’s flaw, we need to find the core of both his and Rolanda’s arguments. Let’s start with Rolanda. She concludes the Oak Avenue house is the best one to rent because it has the largest yard.

Largest yard in Prairieview --> Best one to rent.

Is this a perfect argument? Maybe if you really, really like big yards. But perhaps Tom will point out how the house is located in a bad school district, or maybe that it’s at the actual mouth of hell. Let’s see:

Tom says it’s not the best house to rent because the yard is smaller than it looks. Why is it deceptively small? Because property rules in Prairieview make city property look like private property.

Prairieview property lines start 20ft from the street --> yard smaller than it looks --> not the best one to rent.

Tom is sold on Rolanda’s "biggest yard is best to rent" argument, but he tells Rolanda that property quirks in Prairieview make yards smaller than they appear, so this yard wasn’t the biggest in Prairieview. Is this a great rebuttal? No. Heck no. Rolanda’s response helps us understand why.

Rolanda responds by pointing out all the houses viewed were subject to the mentioned rule. Does this reveal a gap in Tom’s reasoning? You bet. Tom says yards in Prairieview are smaller than they appear, but he fails to remember that they only looked at houses in Prairieview. The property rule would have made every yard seem larger than it actually was. We want an answer that points this out.

(A) Would Rolanda point this out? Sounds more like a flaw in her own argument (that biggest yard is best to rent). Tom’s mistake was that he forgot all yards would appear bigger. This answer doesn’t point his mistake out. Eliminate.

(B) Tom doesn’t do this. If anything, he does the opposite: if the city property could be used by the property owner, what does it matter if it’s not actually part of the "yard"? Eliminate.

(C) Close, because we’re talking about generalizations. But isn’t the rule intended to cover the discussed property? Sure, because it’s in Prairieview. Eliminate.

(E) No. What part/whole could this possibly refer to? Part of the house to the whole house? Part of Prairieview to all of Prairieview? Eliminate.

That leaves (D): He fails to apply a general rule to all relevant instances.

Yes. The rule applied to all the homes they looked at, but he applied it only to the home on Oak Avenue.